Another teachers union is threatening a classroom walkout - in a move that could see 7,000 staff abandon their desks.

The Irish National Teachers’ Organisation has announced they are to ballot for strike action, warning Northern Ireland’s education sector has reached “crisis point”.

The move comes as teachers in the NASUWT union prepare to stage a one-day stoppage tomorrow. Other teachers’ unions are expected to follow suit, with INTO Northern Secretary Gerry Murphy saying the forthcoming action is “a demonstration of teacher unity on a scale seldom seen before”.

The INTO said they have sent letters to its 7,000 members “less than a month after pickets took place at the school gates in protest of an ‘insulting’ pay offer from the Government after 13 months of talks failed”.

The union says it is “seeking a mandate to embark on a series of strikes in December and also says it will withdraw its co-operation from the Education and Training Inspectorate (ETI) to further escalate its campaign for a fair wage increase for teachers”.

Gerry Murphy said “prolonged negotiations with the Department of Education, and the Employing Authorities, have been a genuine attempt to resolve the pay issue but claims the employers and the Department of Education have been negotiating in bad faith”.

INTO NI chief Gerry Murphy. Pic INTO

He added: “INTO members, along with every other teacher, have been denied any wage increase for the 2015/16 year, despite the Minister’s claims to the contrary. They have been offered a mean one per cent for the 2016/17 year. This is also despite all other teachers in the education sector in Northern Ireland, and every jurisdiction across these islands, receiving a pay increase for the 2015/16 year.

“INTO, along with our other teaching union colleagues in the Northern Ireland Teachers’ Council (NITC), had been engaged in a prolonged negotiation with the Employing Authorities and their masters in the Department of Education (DE) for over a year in a genuine attempt to resolve the 2015/16 pay claim.

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“However, it became clear the Employers and the Department were negotiating in bad faith when monies budgeted to meet the teachers’ pay bill for 2015/16 had been already earmarked to plug the gap in school finances arising from a re-alignment in National Insurance and pension contributions.

“The Minister for Education, Mr Peter Weir, wrote to schools during Halloween to break the news, echoing an announcement at the DUP Party Conference that he was putting an additional £14million into school budgets. He neglected to share with his DUP colleagues, and indeed the public, that half of that money was being taken from the pockets of teachers.”

Mr Murphy said INTO “has not taken this step towards strike action lightly but said teachers have had enough and the power to avoid prolonged and significant strike action lies firmly in Mr Weir and the Department’s hands”.